While most talented employees inevitably find their way up the company ladder, many others get stuck in dead-end jobs and trapped in a comfort zone that does not help them get ahead. What can those with high potential do to ensure they are challenged, developed and ultimately successful in their careers?
Hiring qualified candidates is always a challenge, and with unemployment at historical lows, it’s harder today to find candidates that are both qualified and available than at any time in the past 50 years. In this environment of worker scarcity, it’s easy to hire candidates only to find out later that they just can’t do the work.
When moving up from executing tasks to managing others, leaders find themselves one step away from “the action” and risk becoming detached. Unless they get regular, honest feedback from their followers about their abilities as managers, leaders can’t expect to become stronger leaders.
Not holding teams accountable can stall strategic initiatives, produce backstabbing and even sabotage, and lead to the exit of talented and motivated executives. Here’s how you can introduce accountability in the workplace.
Midsized companies can’t be run like an old-world family with one all-powerful matriarch or patriarch. Growth requires an empowered c-suite who are actively growing the leadership capabilities of their teams.
Many CEOs of private midsize companies are reluctant to share financial details of their firms with the rest of the company. But read why sharing those numbers is crucial and one approach to opening the books that works well.
In 2011, Jeffrey Glazer was handed a rare opportunity: the chance to once again lead the company he had founded 26 years earlier. Like a parent whose wayward adult child moves back home, Glazer saw things he didn’t like.
Glazer decided he had to alter the culture fast, and he did so by rebuilding his senior leadership team, promoting talent inside the organization, putting his new team in charge of several dozen big accounts, and not expecting mindsets to change overnight.
Want to Upgrade Your Business? Upgrade Your Leadership Team!
A maturing industry requires its leaders to act differently. As industry players grow larger to manage compliance burdens and to gain access to capital, leadership styles that worked in the past can become dysfunctional.
Directors & Boards has excerpted part of Rob’s new book regarding Tolerating Dysfunctional Leaders in their Thought Leadership section of their Q4 2014 publication. “From a roundup of new books, insights on mentorship, executive team under-performance, enduring traits, director interlocks, doing an IPO . . . and the value of your non-customers” they included Rob’s newest book.
Finding great leaders to join your company is required. Keeping the dysfunctional ones will kill your growth.
Robert Sher is founding principal of CEO to CEO, a consulting firm of former chief executives that improves the leadership infrastructure of midsized companies seeking to accelerate their performance. He was chief executive of Bentley Publishing Group from 1984 to 2006 and steered the firm to become a leading player in its industry (decorative art publishing).